Stay Away From You Students’ Facebook Pages

I know there is a strong argument that Twitter and Facebook are potentially wonderful tools for education, where the teacher can drive education, using the social media outlet that their students are so attached to.

But like with so many different areas, the worst individuals spoil it for everyone else.

In today’s day and age teachers should steer clear from communicating with their students on social media. It is just not appropriate. The fact that some teachers use it for good, is not a convincing argument. It is the few teachers that use for the evil that makes it imperative for teachers to give such contact a wide berth.

It’s stories like this that make it impossible for fair-minded teachers to friend a student on Facebook:

A teacher has been banned from the classroom after a disciplinary body found that he swore in front of pupils and made sexually suggestive and inappropriate remarks to them.

William Richard Jones, who was head of art at Ysgol Friars, a high school at Bangor, Gwynedd, was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct following a hearing by the General Teaching Council for Wales.

Jones, who was friends with some of his pupils on Facebook, had inappropriate social contact with them and 10 of 11 allegations against him were proven.

Jones admitted that he commented on a photograph of a pupil on Facebook, writing: ‘Beautiful! I wish I was 34 years younger :-)xxxxx.’

And a second pupil said Mr Jones told her she looked ‘gorgeous’ in a photo she had on her mobile phone.